Sense Of Security

ON GREENMOUNT Avenue, where the neighborhood starts to get a little rough, Dr. Pallavi Kumar pulls into a gas station. She looks around and sees several guys who are nobody's definition of choirboys. She gets out of her car. As she pumps gas into her tank, she feels an odd sense of security she no longer feels at home. Home is the Washington-area suburbs, where somebody has been shooting people at random. Kumar lives in Bethesda, Montgomery County, where the sniper began his killings three weeks ago, shooting a man on a supermarket parking lot, and then killing five more people the next day as they went about such routine business as sitting on a bench, mowing grass -- or pumping gas. That rampage has claimed 12 victims, nine of them dead.

Kiara Raney, 18, of Columbia was ready for a day of shopping at The Mall in Columbia last Saturday when the flurry of text messages came. There was a shooting. Three people were dead. Family and friends warned her to stay clear. But she has since gone back - she recently applied for a job at a mall store and still hopes to get it. "I'm already aware; when I go somewhere, I look around a lot. Now when I go [to the mall], I'm doing that, but more," Raney said. "It really hasn't changed for me, but for other people you can see that the mall will never be the same.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Teenage boys were playing soccer on the grassy parkland along Abu Nawas Street on Friday. A few parents were strolling the street gesturing to their young children as they gazed out over the Tigris River. Abu Nawas Street was once a famous haunt lined by gardens and popular fish restaurants. But as of six months ago, it was a garbage-strewn strip bisected by 12-foot concrete blast barriers. Six months ago, when I was last in Baghdad, few cars ventured out on a Friday.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and serves as a point to measure the indelible impact that day has had on the American people. In recent weeks, much has been written and broadcast about the shock and horror of that day and its lasting influence on public policy and even the national psyche. Such a commemoration is only natural, given the gravity of that day. Perhaps, for some, there is a catharsis to be found in reliving those fateful hours when so many watched in disbelief as two passenger jets struck the World Trade Center buildings in New York, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a rural Pennsylvania farm field.

PORT ST. LUCIE, FLA. -- The Orioles are not only prepared to finalize a contract extension that will keep second baseman Brian Roberts with the club through the 2009 season, but they're also willing to offer him an added sense of security. Roberts' contract will likely include a limited no-trade clause that will allow him to submit a "small" number of teams that he cannot be traded to without his consent, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. Nationals@Mets Today, 1:05 p.m., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mid-Atlantic Sports Network

The do-or-die urgency among proponents of a special taxing district for Charles Village and vicinity underlines the crisis of confidence that exists in Baltimore City. After years of murder and mayhem, Baltimoreans are desperate for a sense of security. Many feel the municipal government no longer can provide sufficient policing and sanitation services and think a private auxiliary effort is needed.Residents in two wealthy communities have hired additional security on a voluntary basis; several others are considering it. The proposed Charles Village-centered district is the first one where residential and commercial property owners would be mandated by law to pay extra taxes to an authority in charge of beefed-up protection, sanitation and recreation services.

YOUNG GIRLS waiting outside a public library never will have to worry about Timothy Bryan Chase again.Howard Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure handed down an appropriate sentence to the 29-year-old rapist: Life in prison plus 25 years for his conviction in the March 1996 attack on a 15-year-old girl outside the Howard County Library's Central Branch in Columbia.The crime shook Howard County's sense of security, perhaps more than any since the grisly carjacking murder of Pam Basu in 1992.

YOUNG GIRLS waiting outside a public library never will have to worry about Timothy Bryan Chase again.Howard Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure handed down an appropriate sentence to the 29-year-old rapist: Life in prison plus 25 years for his conviction in the March 1996 attack on a 15-year-old girl outside the Howard County Library's Central Branch in Columbia.The crime shook Howard County's sense of security, perhaps more than any since the grisly carjacking murder of Pam Basu in 1992.

A state arbitration panel has awarded $1.6 million to the family of a 38-year-old South Baltimore man who died of a heart attack shortly after an emergency room doctor told him he had an upset stomach and sent him home, a lawyer for the family said.Lawrence Henry Korb Sr., a bottled water deliveryman who worked in Frederick, went to the emergency room at Frederick Memorial Hospital on Aug. 1, 1989, complaining of chest pains, said Joanne L. Suder, the lawyer.The physician who treated Mr. Korb ordered an electrocardiogram, consulted by phone with Mr. Korb's physicians and then sent the patient home, Ms. Suder said.

It was a year of heartache and fear for many Crofton residents who were stunned by the slaying of a good friend and two rapes.The most shocking incident in a violent year came on Sept. 17, when the body of Gwyn Dixon Criswell, 41, was found in the woods behind the Crofton library on Route 3.The popular Crofton resident, who worked at the Department of Defense, left her home at 10:30 a.m. the day before to go shopping at Crofton Square. At 4:15 p.m., her husband reported her missing.Police searched for hours that Sunday and by the end of Monday, they found her partially nude body.

By Mark Magnier and Mark Magnier,Los Angeles Times | November 30, 2008

MUMBAI, India - In normal times, money drives Mumbai. And even as police detonated grenades they removed yesterday from the last redoubt of a terrorist band, residents fretted about the effects of three days of violence on the energy that unites rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim in India's commercial capital. By targeting two luxury hotels, a restaurant popular with tourists and a Jewish center, the attackers appeared intent on destroying Mumbai's economic livelihood, driving away foreign investors and tourists, analysts said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Teenage boys were playing soccer on the grassy parkland along Abu Nawas Street on Friday. A few parents were strolling the street gesturing to their young children as they gazed out over the Tigris River. Abu Nawas Street was once a famous haunt lined by gardens and popular fish restaurants. But as of six months ago, it was a garbage-strewn strip bisected by 12-foot concrete blast barriers. Six months ago, when I was last in Baghdad, few cars ventured out on a Friday.

PORT ST. LUCIE, FLA. -- The Orioles are not only prepared to finalize a contract extension that will keep second baseman Brian Roberts with the club through the 2009 season, but they're also willing to offer him an added sense of security. Roberts' contract will likely include a limited no-trade clause that will allow him to submit a "small" number of teams that he cannot be traded to without his consent, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. Nationals@Mets Today, 1:05 p.m., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mid-Atlantic Sports Network

Eventually, Donald H. Rumsfeld will go. But when it happens - and the sooner, the better - it won't be for the right reasons. As he enters his sixth year in office, the combative defense secretary has made plenty of enemies and wrought plenty of damage, and he must know that some day he will become expendable. But if his departure should serve to deflect attention from what's really wrong with the war in Iraq and with the ideology that spawned it - well, that would be too bad. The neoconservatives detest Mr. Rumsfeld, and several have called on him to quit.

Moonlighting, anyone? Annapolis Alderman George O. Kelley Sr. showed up at the last city council meeting in his security guard uniform, cutting quite a large figure. Kelley, a recently converted Republican who is challenging Democratic Mayor Ellen O. Moyer in this fall's mayoral election, is an ex-police officer who owns and operates a security firm with his son. Business must be too brisk to change clothes for a part-time City Hall night gig. -- Jamie Stiehm City's version of bloody Scotland?

PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK me: "Is it hard to be a professional writer like you and Joyce Carol Oates?" Yes. Very hard. Here is a true example of the kind of difficulties we face: The other day I was in sitting at my desk in my home office, doing what I do all day, which is frown at my computer screen and wrestle with professional writing issues, such as: "Do I have anything to say about this topic?" And: "What, exactly, IS this topic?" This is tiring work, so roughly 35,000 times a day I have to take a break to eat something or drink something or scratch something.

ATLANTA -- Rod Bratton and his family left one tragedy last week and headed right into another.The family is from Montoursville, Pa., and Bratton, his wife, Jeanne, and their two teen-age sons knew most of the 21 people from that town who died in the crash of TWA Flight 800.The Brattons were sitting at a table late yesterday afternoon outside Olympic Stadium, waiting to get into the second night of the track and field competition. Just as what happened to their neighbors and friends on Flight 800 will not prevent them from flying in the future, what happened here early yesterday at Centennial Olympic Park will not deter them from attending the 1996 Olympic Games.

A Howard County circuit judge yesterday sentenced a 40-year-old Columbia man to two years in jail for tying up his wife and shooting her 25 times with an electric stun gun.Judge Dennis M. Sweeney called Brian Keith Sutherland's crime a "horrific and terrible" act against his wife, Margaret Sutherland, 42."Committing such acts against anyone, but against someone you're joined in matrimony and who is the mother of your children, even in an acrimonious divorce, doesn't add any element of excuse," Sweeney said.

Don't ask a Fairspring resident who has the best apartment. You might start an argument. Residents of the four-story, red-brick apartment complex for seniors in Edmondson Heights, which opened in September, are happy with their new homes. "Up on the fourth floor, that's the penthouse. That's where I live," said Pauline Burton, 69, a retired food service employee for Baltimore schools. But Burton's former co-worker and longtime friend, Luberta Jones, thinks her apartment on the second floor is best because of the view.

By John Woestendiek and John Woestendiek,SUN STAFF | February 15, 2003

The man was clearly out of his element. He wandered the store aisles, unsure where to find what he was looking for, and even more unsure how his wife was going to react when he brought it all home three days before Valentine's Day. Shyly, he asked another customer for advice, made his choices and, after a final check of his handwritten list, brought his items - not a box of chocolates among them - to the Home Depot checkout counter: Duct tape Plastic...